Deputy Min­is­ter Gan­dawa ar­rested for Zimdef ‘fraud’

HIGHER and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion, Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy De­vel­op­ment Deputy Min­is­ter Dr God­frey Gan­dawa was yes­ter­day ar­rested and re­leased into the cus­tody of his lawyer after a five-hour grilling by the Zim­babwe Anti-Cor­rup­tion Com­mis­sion over his role in the al­leged abuse of State funds.

A close source told our Harare Bureau last night that Dr Gan­dawa, who was ac­com­pa­nied by his lawyer Mr Bernard Chidziva, handed him­self over to the an­ti­cor­rup­tion body for the due process of the law.

“They came in the morn­ing and he was re­leased later in the af­ter­noon,” said the source with­out elab­o­rat­ing.

Dr Gan­dawa, who is ex­pected to ap­pear in court soon, was re­leased after a warned and cau­tioned state­ment was recorded.

The ar­rest of the deputy min­is­ter comes a day after High and Ed­u­ca­tion, Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy Min­is­ter Pro­fes­sor Jonathan Moyo was ar­rested on Wed­nes­day. He was also re­leased into the cus­tody of his lawyer Mr Ter­rence Hus­sein.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion at hand, $95 800 was trans­ferred from Zimdef to Wish­bone Trad­ing through CABS. Dr Gan­dawa re­ceived $20 000 through his per­sonal Bar­clays ac­count after which he trans­ferred $19 030 to HIB Ra­jput PL T/A Ace Cy­cles. Dr Gan­dawa then trans­ferred $27 550 to SKM Mo­tor­cy­cles for 10 tri­cy­cles for Prof Moyo and the bal­ance was with­drawn in cash.

It is also now pub­lic knowl­edge that $107 525 was trans­ferred from Zimdef to Fuzzy Tech­nolo­gies’ NMB Bank ac­count, of which $5 745 was trans­ferred to Prid­ham In­vest­ments for Dr Gan­dawa’s per­sonal fur­ni­ture.

Dr Gan­dawa also paid for 69 bi­cy­cles worth $7 260 for Prof Moyo. He also trans­ferred $12 900 to Wise­bone Trad­ing as cap­i­tal to fi­nance his per­sonal busi­ness and the re­main­der was with­drawn in cash.

The doc­u­ments fur­ther show ZACC is in­ves­ti­gat­ing a sep­a­rate case in which Prof Moyo and Dr Gan­dawa are sus­pected of get­ting Zimdef to re­lease 100 000 litres of diesel worth $118 500, fuel which was then di­verted to the black mar­ket.

It is al­leged the fuel was re­quested by the Zim­babwe Youth Coun­cil on July 26 for a “skills gap as­sess­ment pro­gramme.”

Dr Gan­dawa rec­om­mended the al­lo­ca­tion and Prof Moyo gave his ap­proval on Au­gust 4, 2016.

Prof Moyo, Dr Gan­dawa, Mr Man­dizvidza and Mr Ma­pute could have un­law­fully ben­e­fited from $430 000 of the State en­ter­prise’s money be­tween Novem­ber 2015 and June 2016, doc­u­ments show. ZACC is in­ves­ti­gat­ing other al­leged abuses of Zimdef funds by Prof Moyo, his deputy, and three sub­or­di­nates.